A quick entry for a title which was to be an Electronic Novel for Broderbund and Synapse. Where most of the planned titles were released and coded by Joe Viera (http://www.gamebase64.com/search.php?a=5&f=1&id=1963&d=18&h=0), the rest of them for some reason never quite made it.
This was one of those titles which never surfaced. According to MobyGames, it is suggested that the previous games were released to mixed success – which is probably why this title was cancelled. MobyGames also had the following mentioned (thanks to Fabrizio for flagging!):
“Synapse Software’s William Mataga and Steve Hales spent much of 1984-1985 designing a new “predictive” text adventure parser to incorporate Eliza’s intuition into a competitor for Infocom’s text parser. (BTZ expanded to “Better Than Zork”.)
These resultant works of interactive fiction were marketed by Synapse’s friendly acquirer Broderbund as “electronic novel”s to mixed success, leaving the line with four works published and three complete but unreleased (Ronin, House of Changes, and Deadly Summer)”
But its been confirmed that the game was completed and should be out there some where. Does Joe Viera have a copy of the game still?
Time will tell!
Contributions: Allan Pinkerton, Fabrizio Bartoloni
Supporting content
Update history
24/09/24 – Details about the engine thanks to Fabrizio Bartoloni and MobyGames.
“[…] Synapse Software’s William Mataga and Steve Hales spent much of 1984-1985 designing a new “predictive” text adventure parser to incorporate Eliza’s intuition into a competitor for Infocom’s text parser. (BTZ expanded to “Better Than Zork”.) These resultant works of interactive fiction were marketed by Synapse’s friendly acquirer Broderbund as “electronic novel”s to mixed success, leaving the line with four works published and three complete but unreleased (Ronin, House of Changes, and Deadly Summer).”
https://www.mobygames.com/group/9149/game-engine-btz/
Thanks Fabrizio – just added to the page!